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UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

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Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#101

Post by mavhc »

Reason077 wrote: post #62
catwell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in England for about a year in 2009 - 2010 and I never had a bank account there. I was willing to open one, but a law (which probably existed to prevent fraud and laundering) made it very hard to do so without proof of permanent residence in the UK, which I did not have. Eventually I decided it was easier for me to upgrade my French Mastercard to the Gold level, where I had no extra fees when withdrawing or p…

As a French national you would only need 2 things to open a UK bank account: your French passport and some kind of document that shows you have a UK address. Proof of address used to be easy as any utility bill would do, but now days it's trickier because so much is done online and paper bills don't get sent out much any more! And, of course, it's a problem if the bills at your house are in someone else's name. (They…

If only they accepted PDFs and banks actually digitally signed the PDFs they create for you to download

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#102

Post by JetSpiegel »

blibble wrote: post #100
msla wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GDS’s GA Premium account contractually prevents Google from investigating the data What's the penalty for completely disregarding that? Is it anywhere near large enough to justify them not disregarding it? More to the point: Pretty much the only thing a contract can do is impose a monetary penalty. Even if it's quite large, it's still only money, and Google rakes in money by the bushel basket from selling data to a…

in this specific case they would be messing with the UK government on a controversial topic in the public view... the contractual penalty would be the least of their worries

> messing with the UK government on a controversial topic in the public view

Is it in the public view? How many Daily Mail headlines about Google Analytics have you read ever?

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#103

Post by DanBC »

robin_reala wrote: post #11
Nursie wrote: post #8

Still got Google Analytics on the page. I do not feel that reporting every online interaction I have with my government in the UK, back to a huge corporate in the US, is in any way appropriate. But I can't even get anyone to engage on the issue. When I tried to raise it I got directed to a helpdesk ticket on a site run by an SV helpdesk-as-a-service company. I appreciate that gov.uk have done some great stuff getting…

GDS’s GA Premium account contractually prevents Google from investigating the data, and Google self-anonymises with a flag in their API[1]. If you don’t trust them then that’s fine, but for functionality vs cost it seems to be the best option. For what it’s worth, for extremely sensitive projects like GOV.UK Verify other options are fine; Verify uses a local Piwik instance. You’re also welcome to block that specific…

I know you get asked this kind of question in every thread, but do you know where I can send questions about the judiciary.gov site?

They hold the coroner's letters to prevent future deaths, but the search is not useful.

It would be good if I could search and return every letter about eg deaths by suicide or railway deaths or etc.

It seems a shame to have all these reports to prevent future death locked away.

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#104

Post by Cozumel »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #65
Cozumel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what did the Romans ever do for us?

13 million dead: All Punic Wars: 1.0M Gladiators: 1.0M Slave Wars (Servile Wars): 1.0M Cimbri-Teutoni War: 0.3M Social War: 0.3M Mithridatic Wars: ca. 0.5M Gallic War: 1.0M Juleo-Claudian Paranoia: 0.028M Jewish Wars: 0.4M Boudica's Revolt: 0.15M Decline and Fall: 7.0M TOTAL: over 13.0M Source: http://necrometrics.com/romestat.htm

It's a Monty Python reference. /sigh

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#105

Post by Angostura »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #63
Angostura wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is a necessity (I think it is), it's not clear to me how it can not be compulsory. If it's not compulsory it is charitable giving, not taxation.

> If it is a necessity (I think it is), it's not clear to me how it can not be compulsory. But you wouldn't make that claim of any _other_ vital service, would you? Food, water, transport, medicine ... all these and more are provided by voluntary payment - or by charity for those who can't afford it. What's special about Government that it requires compulsion to fund?

In that case you are arguing that taxation isn't necessary.

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#107

Post by duncan_bayne »

Cozumel wrote: post #104
duncan_bayne wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13 million dead: All Punic Wars: 1.0M Gladiators: 1.0M Slave Wars (Servile Wars): 1.0M Cimbri-Teutoni War: 0.3M Social War: 0.3M Mithridatic Wars: ca. 0.5M Gallic War: 1.0M Juleo-Claudian Paranoia: 0.028M Jewish Wars: 0.4M Boudica's Revolt: 0.15M Decline and Fall: 7.0M TOTAL: over 13.0M Source: http://necrometrics.com/romestat.htm

It's a Monty Python reference. /sigh

Yeah, I got that :) But it's also a valid question, with a valid answer.

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#108

Post by duncan_bayne »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #77
duncan_bayne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voluntary taxation is a fringe theory with some fairly serious flaws... the primary one in my opinion being that it erodes democracy by pushing even more influence over government into the hands of people with deep enough pockets to pay more (but only when they're happy). The incentives in that kind of system would be all wrong. It's a side issue to the one we're discussing, but ... that's what we have right now, a…

> It's morally wrong to initiate force. Then you would agree that private property rights are immoral because they don't exist without the threat of force.

No, because there is a difference between _initiation_ of force, and other uses of same. See:

https://mises.org/blog/relation-between-non-aggression-princ...

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#109

Post by duncan_bayne »

jamespo wrote: post #82
duncan_bayne wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta-question: do you believe that ethical decisions in politics must only proceed once someone can point to that decisions having been made in the past? That it is insufficient to point to the _wrong_ inherent to compulsion and say "let's stop this?". Would you make the same argument to abolitionists prior to the Civil War? Leaving the issue of evidence aside, I'd generalise from the countless vital goods and servic…

So you would acquire evidence with a very large assumption?

I'm saying that some things - for example, slavery - can be proved to be morally wrong without having to perform an examination of the material evidence against it. You wouldn't have to carefully study the conditions on slave ships and plantations to vote for abolition.

Re: UK Government's Payment Infrastructure Is Now Open Source

#110

Post by richmarr »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #108
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's morally wrong to initiate force. Then you would agree that private property rights are immoral because they don't exist without the threat of force.

No, because there is a difference between _initiation_ of force, and other uses of same. See: https://mises.org/blog/relation-between-non-aggression-princ...

Private property is protected by the threat of force, and if violated actual force.

Taxation is protected by the threat of force, and if violated actual force.

You're drawing a boundary around money and calling it yours because it happens to be in your pocket, and saying the government is threatening force to take it... but in the USA in 2017 all that money is not yours, it belongs to the nation in exchange for services, defence, etc. Witholding it is a form of theft; you would be the one violating the property of others and demanding the initiation of force.

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